Disposable sheet style dispensers are well-known in the art for dispensing individual folded sheet products such as facial tissues, hand sheets, wet wipes, or the like. In general, disposable sheet dispensers typically include a container and a stack or clip of pre-folded, interfolded sheets disposed within the container. The sheets may be C-folded, V-folded, Z-folded, tab-bonded or flat so that once the top sheet in the clip is withdrawn, the underlying sheet is individually presented for subsequent use.
One of the common problems among disposable sheet dispensers involves the issue of “double pull”. This occurs when more than one sheet comes out of the container when the leading sheet is withdrawn. Additionally, the problem of “streaming” can occur in disposable sheet dispensers. Streaming occurs when the user pulls the first sheet out, and subsequent sheets are also withdrawn, with the separation of the following ones never occurring.
To overcome some of these problems, disposable sheet dispensers have been designed with the dispensing slot covered by a plastic film defining a slit. The use of slits has worked well in eliminating some of the above problems, and narrow slits are also well suited for presenting tissue sheets for subsequent removal. In some applications, however, it is sometimes difficult to remove the initial sheet from the stack when a slit is present. For instance, the slit can interfere with the ability of a user to grab the leading edge.
In order to overcome some of these problems, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,952 to Masui, which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, a box containing facial tissues is disclosed in which a tape or strings are attached to the undersurface of a removable panel of the box and to the upper most of the facial tissues. In this manner, when the box is opened, and the removable panel is removed along a perforated line, the upper most facial tissue is automatically removed from the container along with the removable panel.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,715,633 to Thoms, which is also incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, a dispenser for dispensing a stack of disposable sheets is disclosed having a removable panel that is releasably attached to the first sheet in the stack. When the removable panel is pulled off the container, the first sheet in the stack is partially withdrawn from the container. After being partially withdrawn, however, the sheet releases from the removable panel.
Although the above two patents have provided advancements in the art, further improvements are still needed. For example, with the methods disclosed in the above cited patents, the adhesive is exposed to the interior volume of the dispenser during manufacture of the structure and subsequent insertion of the clip of interfolded sheets. This situation is disadvantageous in that the adhesive may interfere with production of the dispenser container and loading of the clip of sheets into the dispenser. Also, the potential exists for the adhesive to become soiled by any manner of particulate matter inherently present in any facility that processes tissue products, thus rendering the adhesive ineffective.